


3 AM

by MatsuokasPonytail



Category: Free!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 13:12:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6521146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MatsuokasPonytail/pseuds/MatsuokasPonytail
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kind of a sad little drabble.</p><p>Dedicated to my new fave Kaitlyn because she reminded me that I wrote this little thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	3 AM

The grandfather clock in the living room struck once, then twice, then a third time before the echo of the haunting, low-pitched chimes resounded throughout the house. The sound ceased entirely after what seemed like an eternity, leaving the house to create its own noise to fill the ear-piercing silence. With every minute breeze, the frame of the house would creak just enough for the sound to be bordering disconcerting, giving the building itself breath to sigh along with all the people who had ever been inside it. With every occasional car that didn’t belong passing along the road (carrying passengers that correspondingly didn’t belong), the lights would glare harshly through the colorless curtains, casting indelicate shadows across the gleaming hardwood floors.

Aside from that, there was no motion coming from the house; no disturbances or nuisances, and no matter how long one waited for an explanation as to why the house seemed so eerie, so sinister and _out of place_ as it did in that moment, there would be no answer, for the house itself seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary, yet the feeling of restlessness and dissatisfaction radiating from the house remained.

People often believed the house was empty, abandoned, or desolate, even as the house itself breathed along with the passersby. It had been, at some point, abandoned, but never for too long.

Pictures had been taken at dusk numerous times, when the shadows were long, and the rotting trees looked alive, and it was used as a makeshift tourist attraction for a town with nothing to offer but a few bars that were barely scraping by on what the widowed regulars and occasional truck driver could offer.

Two of the three streetlights around the house had been broken for years, the lightbulbs having been shattered by kids throwing rocks numerous times, and were never thought to be replaced.

No one complained, so no one bothered with it.

It was a theme that occurred quite often in towns such as these; the small ones with too many houses and not enough people.

Vandalism on abandoned buildings was no big deal – at least, not a big enough deal to complain – and perhaps there were a few instances of a bicycle or a scooter going missing, in which case the parents would look for a few days and give up, figuring it would just be easier to buy a new one.

Towns like these were the towns he hated most. It was the kind of town he had grown up in, the kind of town he’d grown to detest. From the backroads leading to a city not quite big enough to be considered a city, to the broken swing set across the street from the old, white house, he hated it.

However, here he stood, back in the house he’d been born and raised, listening to the final dying echo of the grandfather clock. He wondered if it was still keeping time the way it used to, in which case it would be exactly thirteen minutes and twenty-six seconds behind.

It had been seven years since he’d stepped foot in the house that built him, that broke him, that chased him away from the only life he’d ever known – seven years since he’d seen _him_.

 _Him_ , with the crashing blue irises, retaining either the wrath of the oceans or the vibrancy of Neptune – he could never decide which one fit better.

 _Him_ , with the alabaster skin that bled luminescence when the moon cut through the windows and shattered on its silken surface.

 _Him_ , with the voice of a Siren, luring him away from what had been killing him softly and helping him become something that made him _alive_.

 _Him_ , with the kiss of a thunderstorm on a summer night, the raindrops falling softly against his skin, dragging lithely along until it dripped from the tips of his fingers.

 _Him_ , whom he loved with the very beat of his heart, with the very blood pulsing through his veins, with the very breath in his lungs.

 _Him_.

It was always, constantly, perpetually, overwhelmingly _him_.

It had been _him_ from the beginning.

 

* * *

 

The fog was heavy, making it difficult to breathe and even harder to see, but the striking irises of the boy in front of him were impossible to miss. The sun had yet to make a full appearance, still as asleep as the residents of the isolated town, and the sky glowed with a pastel pallet of the pinks and yellows of dawn.

Silence was the only thing exchanged between the strangers, even as they walked the next few blocks side by side. At some point, the blue-eyed boy turned left; the other turned right.

When the sun was high, directly above the lifeless town, the two strangers – by sheer coincidence – met again at the corner they had met that morning. The irises were just as luminous as before, if not more so, the sun adding to their gleam.

“Who are you?” he asked, because he knew everyone in the town he’d never left. He knew the white haired woman who lived on Second Street, the green-eyed girl who had a daughter living across from the park, but the boy with the blue eyes was a stranger.

“Haru,” he answered in a tone that could have been easily mistaken for one of seduction, if his body language didn’t scream disinterest.

They were going opposite directions that time, and the boy didn’t stop for small talk. He walked away with a gaze locked on his back.

The next time they met was an intentional meeting. He waited at that corner for Haru at dawn, when the clouds still lingered on the sidewalk and the birds refused to come out.

“Where did you come from?” he asked when the boy rounded the corner, stopping with an expectant look on his face.

“Somewhere with enough worth to actually be considered a town,” he answered, his gentle voice ringing clearly in the thick, silent air.

A shiver ran down his spine.

“I would try to argue with that, because that’s what people should do when they’re speaking with new neighbors, but quite honestly, I have to agree,” he replied.

Time passed quickly from then on, and a few random topics during not-entirely-coincidental happenstances developed into something larger, something deeper, something far more wonderful than he had ever begun to imagine. He didn’t remember it happening. He didn’t remember falling headfirst into a storm of infatuation, but he did fall – he _knew_ he fell. Haru knew he fell, too, and so very soon, the raw emotion was far too obvious to ignore and –

They let themselves get caught in each other’s minds, lost in the gaze that was reserved for just _one person_ , distracted by the placidity in the whispers in the dead of night. They kissed that night, under the stars and a new moon, on that corner they always met at.

Days turned to weeks, weeks to months, and months to years, and they were still mindlessly enamored with the pink tint of the other’s cheeks and the glint in the other’s eyes. Haru moved in with him, and they were still in love.

Then the fights were few and far between, but when a good thing went wrong, _it was wrong_.

It was a dumb fight on that particular evening – they both knew it was – but they couldn’t seem to find a way around it that time. It could have been a misunderstanding. It could have been far worse. They didn’t want to know.

So, they ended it.

They ended it where it all began, on the corner of Cherry and Main, where their initials had been carved into the dying tree next to the jagged sidewalk.

He didn’t go home that night. He left the house to Haru. He wasn’t coming back to the town that knew him better than he knew himself, to the house that destroyed him from the inside out, to the boy that loved him and the boy he loved.

He would have stolen the moon and all the stars for that boy.

He would have given his life to protect him and hold him until he was no longer there.

He would have counted every second they spent together if it meant having one second more.

He would have.

He should have.

But he didn’t.

He moved that night. He moved to a town that was worth enough to be considered a town with only a duffle bag in his back seat. The town had hotels and department stores, bars that had new people every night, houses with identical architecture. It had a life of its own, breathing the same air as its residents.

He hated it, in fact. He hated the noise at night. He hated not being able to see the stars. He hated the smell of the black smoke pouring out from the factory across the street.

He drove through that town instead.

He moved to a different town; a town three days away from his previous destination.

This town had clearer skies, brighter buildings, and more identical houses.

The sounds were still too loud.

Everything was too loud now.

He wanted to move again, so he did. He moved closer to where his home originally was. Perhaps he was beginning to feel a bit homesick. Perhaps it was his remaining misery finally catching up to him.

The stars were out the night he got a call from an unregistered number.

“Come home,” the voice almost said, for it was nearly inaudible when the sweet voice cracked halfway through the first syllable, getting caught in the back of his throat.

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t have, even if he tried.

He went home instead. He drove until his eyelids dropped close, until his head hung loosely on his shoulders, until his muscles all gave out.

He went home.

Home.

It wasn’t the building that breathed, but what he considered home was the boy with the sapphire eyes who breathed life into the house they shared. Home was the beating heart that matched the rhythm of his own. Home was Haru.

He went home a day too late.

As the flat silhouette of the town came into view, the dark rays casting vibrant shadows along the ground, a foreign feeling of unidentifiable dread flooded his lungs, gripping his heart and baring its fangs, digging its nails into the muscle and not releasing until two words passed a neighbor’s lips; two very small words that held the world, that apart seem insignificant, but together could easily tear a human being apart from the inside out.

He’s gone.

He’s gone, they said.

He’s gone, they said, and they said, and they said again, but he couldn’t accept it. He couldn’t believe it, because accepting it, believing it would mean that it was irrefutably, inarguably true. He couldn’t let it be so.

Even as he stared at the closed eyes of the boy he loved, a sickening pallor having taken over the once radiant beam of his ivory flesh, he couldn’t accept that the corpse in front of him, in front of everyone that day, was the boy he let slip between his fingers more fluidly than water in an open hand.

Heart failure, they said.

Heart problems, he heard.

The boy died because of a damaged heart, he said, not to anyone but himself. That was the first day he ever thought that someone could possibly die of a broken heart.

 

* * *

 

So now the grandfather clock still keeps the wrong time, and the same floorboards creak when he steps on them, and every surface is just as immaculate as when he’d last seen _him_ cleaning them seven years ago.


End file.
